When All Else Topples
by JimmyDANj2
Summary: She, in her unwavering cheer, her haste, her vigor, wants to upend worlds, reroute the cosmos. Because when the sole thing that separates existence from oblivion is a gossamer thread, when ruin and rubble is all that she knows, she can only step forward, shrouded in her solitude. After the Metastasis, Arad dies but remains. The Apostles loom, and yet she tastes death with a smile.


"Crap," she laughed, using her thumb to swipe away blood that had trickled its way to her chin.

She wobbled unsteadily atop her broom as it careened this way and that, barely avoiding the enormous tentacles slamming themselves on the walls, splintering the ground, gouging out imprints and flesh-shaped craters where they struck.

One nearly impaled her as it whipped past, causing her to yelp as the rush of wind from its velocity knocked her grip loose. She spiraled out of control, and her broom flailed uselessly away as the ground rose up to meet her with a deafening crunch.

Blood dripped from her nose while she struggled to heft herself up. Her petite arms trembled with the effort.

"Will y' give it a rest already, ya overgrown – eep!"

She managed to roll away just in time before a pillar of orange from beneath shattered the ground she had just vacated. The tremendous appendage thrust itself skyward, leaving no room for doubt in her mind just how little would be left of her had she not cottoned on at the last possible moment.

She drew haggard, shuddering breaths as she stood. Vision blurry, clothes peppered with dried blood, she nonetheless held herself steady, eyeing the titanic monster looming in front of her.

"'Oh, please _save_ us, Dungeon Fighter!'" she mimicked, her voice purposefully shrill. "'You're the only one who can do this! He'll destroy all of Arad! Lotus must be stopped! Lotus musn't be allowed to revive! Lotus, Lotus, Lotus!'"

She smirked at the Apostle, crossing her tiny arms, standing at her full, diminutive stature.

"You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say they _worshipped_ you instead of hated you. They sure are obsessed enough."

When Lotus said nothing, she started pinwheeling her arm, wincing when she felt the bones shift and crack.

"I mean, it's pretty nonchalant of them, the way they sent me here to my death like this without batting an eye. They're so _eager_ to get rid of you, you see?"

"It is _your_ folly if you honestly believed a mere mortal such as yourself would stand a chance against me," came the Apostle's deep, throaty voice.

"Y'don't hafta tell me," she sighed. "I know, I know. 'S not their faults. I'm the arrogant one who charged in here all reckless and hopeful. Tryin' to prove myself or whatever, to show that I can handle anything. That I can _fix_ all that's happened."

Her eyes misted over, and she lost her mischievous posture. She remembered Pandemonium. She remembered the decay, the distortion, the death. The _twisting_ of fabrics that held worlds together and apart.

"Truth is," she shrugged, a merry bounce to her step. "_I'm _the one who's too eager. I'm in such a hurry to…to maybe bring things back the way they were. Or maybe to give this place – Arad – a better chance than the place I came from, y'know? Hilder's rubbed off on me a lot, seems."

She pointed to him, a grin etched onto her face.

"You get me, right? You're an Apostle! You were brought here, too."

When he didn't deign to respond, she sighed once more.

"Ah, well. I mean, what can you do about it, right? Fact is, _I'm_ still here and kickin', and _you're_ still here and terrifying. Unless this's a date, there's not much for it but to do what we're here to do. Maybe I've sealed my fate, but I'm gonna go out crying and screaming."

She aimed towards him a wide, cheesy smile.

"So, sorry about that."

And he nodded, acknowledging her. The very structure of the entire area rumbled along with his movement, so massive was his bulk.

He re-poised his numerous tentacles, shifting the rubble of the ceiling, the debris strewn across the expanse of the room.

She eyed her broom, lying still several meters away. She extended her arm in front of her, palm up.

"Magic missile," her whisper traveled through the cracks in the ground, stilling the very atmosphere.

Golden energy gathered and swirled above her palm, before it took form and a million streaks of vivid light set the sky ablaze as they rocketed towards her intended target.

Lotus hissed his discontent as the incandescent missiles collided against his figure, rapidly shattering against him again and again.

And as he was preoccupied, she made a mad dash for her broom and snatched it up, once again taking to the skies, soaring towards the clouds, outpacing the monstrous limbs attempting to ruthlessly skewer her from behind.

A shadowy cat materialized atop her shoulder.

"Think you can help me out a bit, Pluto?" she spoke softly to it.

It meowed, before transforming into a purple orb that promptly zoomed straight back towards where she took off from.

"Hey, 'Posty!" she cackled. "Time to find out why you're only number eight! Can ya handle a bit of _Gravitas_?!"

And the moment the orb touched the ground, it expanded outwards. The field of purple illuminated the floor as it grew and grew. When it had sufficiently encompassed the entirety of both the room and Lotus itself, it let loose a powerful, decisive pulse.

Lotus' entire form was buoyed upward, and his tentacles writhed as they were lifted into the air with him. Loose concrete and all manner of debris rose up alongside the monster.

"Sink or swim!" she crowed in delight, taking an exaggerated leap off of her broom just as she grasped its rounded handle with one hand.

She let normal gravity take its toll and fell freely through the air towards Lotus as he was levitated by her magic. She hefted her broom over her head with both hands and swung it down in an arc towards the octopus.

Mid-swing, Pluto darted towards her and melted into the broom, changing it into a purple flyswatter much too large for its intended purpose.

The swatter's thin end sliced into Lotus' eye, causing him to roar and bellow his agony. Blood spurted from the wound and coated her salmon-tinged tresses.

"Blech!" she retched. "Care to give a girl fair _warning_ before you-"

But her breath hitched as a tentacle wrapped swiftly and tightly around her torso, constricting her movement, cutting off her respiration.

They crashed harshly to the ground as Gravitas' effect dwindled and dissipated.

Several of Lotus' other limbs poised themselves above her, pointing down, no doubt planning to snuff her life out then and there.

"F-Florae," she managed to weakly cough out. A blue light burned vividly into existence at her palm, before darting forward at a blistering speed.

It bounced from tentacle to tentacle, cleanly eviscerating each limb before flitting to the next.

It quickly made full circle, zipping back towards her and severing the unyielding prison of flesh coiled around her. She tumbled unceremoniously to the ground.

Hunched over, hands pale from gripping her knees too tightly, she gasped and wheezed for breath. A thin river of blood snaked its way languidly along the back of her hairline, painting the formerly peach-tinted strands crimson.

"Gawd," she flopped backwards onto the uneven, gravel-strewn floor. Lying spread eagle, as if caught in the midst of scraping together a snow angel, she stared up at Lotus through half-lidded, listless eyes.

"I'm spent," she chuckled good-naturedly. "Like, dead-to-the-world exhausted."

Lotus loomed one tentacle over her, the flat underside poised to crush.

"This is it, huh?" she mumbled. "Maintenance afterwards must be a hassle, what with all the guts and entrails. Yuck."

She wrinkled her nose in distaste.

"I'll grant you any last words, if that's what you wish," Lotus prompted. His very speech caused the place to rumble.

"Nah," she snickered. "I'd probably bomb the delivery. Go 'head."

She flicked her wrist at him airily.

He flung the appendage down.

A giant metallic fist torn from space and time collided against Lotus and drove him deep into the far wall through sheer force. A deafening crunch resounded like thunder throughout the hollow expanse of the room.

The tall, lean mechanic spared her one withering-yet-outraged glance, one that promised that hewould _speak to her later_ about this, as he strutted in across the threshold of the dilapidated entrance, before swiveling towards the rubble of the destruction he had caused.

She blinked, recognition sparking in her eyes, and she noticed another man – broad-shouldered, built like a tank, neck adorned with a golden cross – trailing slowly behind the first.

The exorcist nodded to her with a small smile, before quietly hefting his gargantuan axe from where it was strapped to his back.

The smoke cleared away, and Lotus emerged, only to have the hulking holy man bear down mercilessly upon him, singlehandedly barreling the behemoth once again towards the far wall through brute strength alone.

Any tentacles that rose up to intercept were swiftly and efficiently dispatched with one sharp glint of the axe.

"Tempester," the mechanic barked, carelessly fingering the silver strands that hung across his vision.

Gears and coils and processors twisted themselves into being. They washed and blended together like water, and the torrent of metal materialized into a small, pod-like robot, keeping itself afloat through the thrusters on its back. Its white sheen was punctuated by a glowing red oval situated where its eye would be.

But it abruptly lit up with activity, its sensors whirring, alarms blaring, its every orifice ignited. Shafts slid open, nozzles and barrels extended themselves from every possible angle the tiny android could conceivably achieve.

And the sky rained fire.

With unadulterated power that completely belied its diminutive stature, Tempester churned out rockets as if they were bullets, lasers so concentrated they singed the very wind currents, artillery fire in clearly impossible magnitudes for what its small body should be able to hold.

As she bore witness to the two figures keeping Lotus at bay – restraining him, bombarding him – her mouth hung slightly agape, the brightness of the flames reflected in her eyes.

And her lips curled. And she sat up, only to throw her head back and laugh.

And laugh and laugh.

"Well, this just _isn't fair_, now is it?" she chortled, her mirth dripping off of her, sickly sweet. "As if I can have you two show me up like I'm _yesterday's news_!"

And abruptly happy to the brim like the witch she was, and energized again to the brink of absurdity, and illogically revitalized again to the tune of her nonsensical lack of limits _like the witch she was_, she bounded effortlessly to her feet.

Because, really, what the heck was a little thing like _fatigue _to her?

"I GET IT, I GET IT!" she roared gleefully over the din to her comrades. "OKAY? I REALLY DO, Y'DON'T HAFTA RUB IT IN!"

She belted out her laughter and bellowed, "YEAH, YEAH, FRIENDSHIP IS GOOD, FRIENDSHIP IS IMPORTANT, FRIENDSHIP IS LITERALLY BETTER THAN THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD. I CAN'T DO ANYTHING WITHOUT MY PRECIOUS FRIENDS, I CAN'T FIX WHAT I WANT TO FIX WITHOUT MY BESTIES."

A flurry of snow blinked; a snowman's tiny head perched itself on her shoulder.

She looked at it and feigned gagging, before she looked back towards the fight and giggled.

"C'mon, Frosty. Better leap into the fray 'fore I'm smothered by all this mushiness."

And as she stared at the backs of her friends, noting the mechanic's furious expression, the priest's ruthlessly determined visage as they held their ground against the Apostle, she beamed.

Her smile stretched to either end of every cosmos, of every world ripped asunder by the machinations of Pandemonium.

"What is this," she whispered.

Jack Frost expanded and grew and molded itself.

"…A goddamned-"

She leapt over the side of the newly formed mechanized drill and into the driver's seat.

"Syrupy-"

And she revved the engines to full, barreling towards them.

"AFTER SCHOOL SPECIAL?!" she hollered, delighted sarcasm warming her from head to toe.

"_Hey, Stoneface!"_

The exorcist craned his neck, still preoccupied with subduing Lotus, his axe firmly ensconced in the his fleshy confines, and raised an eyebrow in inquiry.

"Gimme a lift, would'ya?"

He nodded, and dislodged his axe, allowing Lotus a brief respite. Taking his weapon, he wrapped both hands firmly about the handle and reeled it back over his shoulder like a baseball bat.

In the instant the witch sped by, she pulled dramatically back on her levers and angled the drill upward. Her muscular companion gritted his teeth as he swung, striking the butt end of the large machine with the flat of his axe, propelling both drill and witch into the air towards Lotus' injured eye.

"Round two, octo-breath!"

Amidst the explosions and infernos, the drill found its target, puncturing through the eye and piercing out through the other side of the monster's body in a disheveled heap of literal guts and glory.

"Ugh!" the witch made her landing, and the drill collapsed underneath her, crumbling into fragments. "I thought it was gross _before_, but now I'm absolutely covered in the stuff."

She futilely attempted to shake herself free of the gunk that had once made up the innards of the resurrected Apostle.

Lotus collapsed, his tentacles slumped to the floor, motor functions disabled as he lay in his own pool of blood.

At death's door, he rumbled out his final missive.

"You deem this…an accomplishment? You think this will…usher peace? You have no idea, no notion, of the true future that befalls the world. Naught but utter, untarnished despair, wrought by matters you are _least_ prepared for."

In the face of his ominous parting words, the witch could only gape in disbelief.

"R-Really? Are you kidding me? You're _seriously_ gonna do this?" she moaned. "You're doing this on purpose. You have to be. It's so _perfectly, nauseatingly _set up, there's no way you're not doing it on purpose."

She gave a long-suffering sigh.

"FINE. You want me to say it? Do you? Remember, you brought this on yourself."

She donned a simpering, high-pitched persona, fluttering her eyelashes in so histrionic a fashion she nearly made herself puke.

"_As long as I have my friends by my side, there's nothing we can't face!"_

Lotus chuckled – a deep, low, demonic sort of affair – before he was claimed by his mortality at last.

She bathed in her satisfied triumph for all of a few moments, before she suddenly froze in remembrance. She teetered about, nervously meeting the livid gaze of one severely pissed off tinkerer.

"What."

The lanky machinist stomped towards her, fists clenched at his side.

"Were."

Around the corner, axe secured once again on his back, the large clergyman trudged quietly towards them.

"You."

She flashed a guilty grin.

"THINKING?!"

Fury mounting, the mechanic ground his teeth, before he sighed and wearily rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Um, hey guys," She offered. "We sure gave 'im what for, didn't we? Heh."

"This has to be," he growled in a low, frustrated tone. "One of the most _idiotic_ ventures you've ever taken up. And that is _really _saying something, believe me. Are you stupid? You were about two seconds from _dying_, moron! Of all the arrogant, irresponsible-"

"P-Psh, come on!" she ribbed him with her elbow. "I _so_ had things under control!"

At his glare, she pouted, poking her fingers together.

"…Okay, maybe not _as_ under control as I would've liked. But it all worked out! Right?"

"Only because we had the good sense to know that if we hadn't seen you for more than two hours, you're either _causing_ trouble, or you're _in_ trouble."

"Yeah, exactly!" she grinned hesitantly. "I _knew_ you guys'd save me. Not like you'd leave pretty li'l me all by her lonesome, would you?"

He exhaled his frustration.

"You're impossible."

"But it's truuuuue, isn't it?" she teased with a cheeky smile.

He glanced at her once, before turning away to view the general wreckage of the room.

"…'Course it is," he grunted. "The three of us will always have each other's backs. Now you'd do well to remember that _before_ you go and tackle life-threatening missions to go kill Apostles _without any help._"

She rubbed the back of her head – still sticky with blood – in apology, grinning sheepishly.

She abruptly leapt up onto the priest's shoulders, stretching out her arms and punctuating her exhaustion with a yawn.

"I'm beat. Carry me back, pretty please?"

The man's intimidating stature belied his gentle acquiescence to the request, as he merely nodded at her, prompting yet another cheeky grin in response.

"You spoil her, you know," the mechanic observed. "You should just let her walk back by herself."

"HEY. Can't you see that I'm _wounded_?"

"Please," he scoffed. "It'd serve you right. Not that trying to teach you a lesson has _ever_ proved fruitful."

"Guess 'm just stubborn," she giggled, closing her eyes and relishing the stale stench of battle that lingered in the air. "But then so are both of you. We're like three peas in a pod, you and you and I."

He nonchalantly twirled his wrench, sighing.

"I guess you've got me there."

He tapped her lightly on the forehead, eliciting a tiny yelp.

"Ow. That's bruised, y'know."

"That's for worrying us, you dunderhead."

"Aww. You _do_ care!" she laughed, before it suddenly morphed into a cough that wracked her entire body.

The priest nudged her.

"Rest," he soothed, his deep voice a balm against her weary spirits. "Sudden movements will agitate your injuries."

"You got it, big man," she laughed, lightly this time.

And for once, she took on a more solemn posture as she glanced back and forth between her saviors. The smile, however, never left her face.

"Thanks. You two really are the best."

And the moment was over, and once again she dissolved into a fit of quiet giggles.

The sun struck the horizon in a frothy display of blood orange just as the trio exited the battlefield.

"Now what say we go back and tell Ophelia that her dumb octopus is finally, finally dead?"

* * *

**Author's Note: **

_I know what you're all thinking, and I'm one step ahead of you, so I'll just get it out of the way: _

I'VE SEEN ENOUGH HENTAI TO KNOW WHERE THIS IS GOING HAHAHAH

No. Well, yes. BUT not on purpose I swear! I mean, it's _Lotus_! It's inevitable if it's _Lotus_.

And if you _weren't_ thinking that…well, crap. I'm certainly embarrassed.

I ADMIT, I got a bit carried away with the friendship fluff at the end there. And I totally shamelessly based these characters off of the ones my friends and I romp around together with, I'M SUCH A DORK, HAH (you know who you are, Mike and Greg LOL). Guilty as charged. So, relinquishing myself to the HYPE that is Dungeon Fighter Online being brought back to life by Neople, I've honored the occasion with FANFICTION. YESH. If you haven't already, go check out and support Neople's Facebook page, as they are literally gods given human form. Join the fight, give in to the hype, it's back _ohmigod_ it's back. I honest to god couldn't hold in the creative juices when the hype struck.

If you _are_ someone who participated in recent Part One of the Open Beta Test, I'd like to think you found some of the familiarity interspersed within the scenes pleasing.

And, um, yeah! Hope you enjoyed, and leave a review to tell me what you thought!

Happy Dreams For You! Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk.


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